National Identity Card
Michael Cope the President of the Queensland Council of Civil Liberties describes the proposal for a National Identity Card as “a blatant and unjustifiable grab for power by bureaucrats and politicians”.
It is clear that a National Identity Card in the UK would not have prevented the recent bombings. Nor would they have prevented the bombings in Madrid or New York. The UK terrorists were carrying ordinary ID and took no steps to hide their identity.
Mr Cope says “Suicide bombers want to be identified. They want the world to see what they have done. A National Identity Card is no deterrent to a suicide bomber”.
The main problem with a National Identity Card is not the card itself but the linking of databases that goes on behind the card. This will enable the Government to identify and track the movements of individual Australians. Highly personal data about individual Australians will be accessible by thousands of public servants.
The National Identity Card will not reduce the risk of identity theft in fact, it will increase the risk of identity theft. A criminal will be able to steal another person’s identity by copying a single card. If the Government can make an identity card someone will quickly learn how to forge it.
Biometric cards are not going to improve the situation. Experts in the UK said that one in ten biometric readings will be wrong.
Mr Cope asks “Can we really rely upon the Government to keep accurate records? Once you have all the Government’s databases linked behind a National Identity Card any error by a public servant in taking down information will infect the whole database”.
When the Government has one database a single data entry error could ruin the life of an individual. At least at present if one bureaucrat gets something wrong in the database in one department it doesn’t necessarily affect the database of every other department.
Politicians and bureaucrats are participating in a cruel hoax by using recent terrorist outrages to justify the need for a National Identity Card, which will not stop terrorists but will bring us a big step closer to George Orwell’s 1984.